


Castellum

by PhoenixGryffin



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare, SHAKESPEARE William - Works
Genre: Angst, Castles, Elsinore, Gen, Ghosts, Hamlet/Horatio if you look for it, POV Third Person Omniscient
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-12
Updated: 2014-10-12
Packaged: 2018-02-20 19:57:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2441060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhoenixGryffin/pseuds/PhoenixGryffin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The castle is very old.</p><p>It has always been this way, or so it seems- has always been by a peaceful lake, has always been a permanent fixture of the town of Elsinore. Generations upon generations have been born, generations upon generations have died, and still the castle stands, a towering rock structure seemingly oblivious to everything outside its walls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Castellum

The castle is very old.

It has always been this way, or so it seems- has always been by a peaceful lake, has always been a permanent fixture of the town of Elsinore. Generations upon generations have been born, generations upon generations have died, and still the castle stands, a towering rock structure seemingly oblivious to everything outside its walls.

The world outside the walls is of no interest in the unfolding story of the castle. All that matters is the towering grey walls and the people who go about their lives inside it, who are more than what they seem. 

This is how the story goes: there are people. A whole host of people live in the castle, ranging from old to young to rich to poor, and they are all _horribly_ multifaceted beings, and slowly but surely they fill the air of the castle with secrets and lies- all intangible, of course, but the corruption remains nonetheless, pressing down in every corner, inescapable, all-encompassing, passed down through generations upon generations.

Here is a secret: there’s a man.

That was a lie. There are two.

That was also a lie. There are many men in this world of grey stone, politics, and decadence.

However, there are only two men in the garden right now, and this is where the story focuses. There are multitudes of people who have occupied the castle before, and multitudes who will occupy it after, but the men, at this second, are in the garden, and one is asleep.

One is asleep forever.

The other man pockets a small vial and exits stage left. Or garden left, as it were.

This man is the one who tells the next lie. He lies almost easily about how _upset_ he is over this _tragedy_ , as though he’s practiced the lie many times in front of the mirror, and perhaps he has.

The woman next to him only nods and buries her head in his shoulder. The man stands there for a moment before slowly and deliberately letting his arms gently enfold the sobbing woman, and she does nothing to push him away. They remain together for a long time, and no one does anything to stop them.

After a while, although for the castle it is really no time at all, two other people arrive, one after the other. The first is a rather accomplished young man, in more senses of the word than one. The young man is rather restless and does not seem entirely thrilled to be back until he truly realizes the full gravity of the occasion.

Despite the upsetting circumstances, however, he greets his father and younger sister joyfully upon arrival. For a while, they are a whole family unit, atypical perhaps, certainly not perfect, but they have learned to be whole.

The other young man who arrives wears nothing but black, and has been very familiar to the castle since the day he was born inside its walls. If the castle had any capacity to love, it might have loved him. He, who does have the capacity to hate, hates the castle, only a little at first for taking his father, and later more and more as time passes and he is trapped in the unending tangle of secrets, the secrets that poison the castle air and turn it into something hollow and cold.

Here is some exposition: at the funeral, the first man from the garden and the woman stand very close together, wrapped in both grief and a semblance of grief, genuine feelings and lies so close together that they mix until neither of them can tell what is real and what is not. They decide they like it that way.

The young man, the son of the dead one, doesn’t ever notice. Or if the son does notice, he thinks nothing of it, too wrapped in sadness to care.

Here is a secret: a month later, the man from the garden and the woman announce their upcoming marriage.

Once they announce their plans to get married, it is no longer a secret, but it does come as a surprise to everyone in the castle’s main hall. It does not come as a surprise to the castle, of course. The castle, if it possessed the ability to retain knowledge, would have already guessed their secret long before.

The young swordsman’s father quickly arranges his shocked expression into one of congratulations, and the young swordsman tries to mirror him with little success. The swordsman has never been very good at hiding his emotions. His sister is not there, but had she been, he is sure she would have been better at pretending to be pleased. 

The other young man, the son of the woman, weakly attempts to protest despite the presence of assorted courtiers, citing the fact that it’s only been a _month_ , the fact that the man is the brother of the woman’s dead husband, the fact that it’s _only been a month_.

The woman nods but replies that they are in love, and anyway the man’s going to be king so don’t you see that it really will work out for the better?

My father’s only been dead for a month, says the son. Only a month.

The man slowly approaches the son while saying gentle, truthful things, saying that it undoubtedly must be hard but life goes on, saying that your old father’s dead but perhaps in time I could be your father, and he means every word of it.

The son, struggling to keep his face impassive, quickly turns and leaves the room, breaking into a run once he believes that no one can see him, and no one can. He ascends the stairs and goes into a large room before finally breaking down in a paroxysm of grief, hating the man, hating the woman, and hating the castle. The castle, all impassive grey walls and secrets, does not care.

 All the other inhabitants of the castle are below. The swordsman’s father, the advisor to the new king, consoles the man and woman with trite platitudes, saying that he is sure the son will come around in time, that the wedding will be _lovely_. The woman nods and thanks him, and for the time being, woes are somewhat forgotten as plans are made for the upcoming wedding celebration. It will be gaudy and golden and wonderful. It will help them forget all their sorrow, says the man, and the woman, still wearing black but desperately wanting to be happy again, nods wordlessly.

The castle’s walls are thick, and no one below hears the son cry.

The castle’s walls are not thick enough.

It is nighttime.

It is nighttime, and the walls are thin, and the son can hear the shifts of a mattress and the sounds of labored breathing from the room next to his, and he would give anything to be anywhere or anyone else. 

The son covers his ears in a vain attempt to block out all the sound from the room to the left. His eyes are also squeezed tightly shut. Hear no evil, see no evil.

 It doesn’t help. The castle is meant to protect its inhabitants from the things they fear, but is failing miserably in that regard. Walls can only be so thick; the occupants together in the room to the left gasp and moan and hold each other tightly, filled with love and lust and the possibility of not being alone, and the sole occupant of the room to the right sobs quietly into the pillows on the bed, feeling more alone than ever.

Come the next morning, the son has black circles under his eyes and speaks to no one.

The woman, worried, tries to speak with him, something about how he looks _awful_ today, didn’t he get enough sleep? But the son only stands up and leaves without even touching breakfast, leaves and returns back to the room that he cannot stand but refuses to leave, the room that he despises and yet cannot seem to escape.

Back downstairs, the man consoles the worried woman, whispers sweet reassurances and harmless half-lies into her ear, and despite herself, she smiles for the first time since her husband died.

The other occupants of the table pretend they do not see, but they do, and so would the castle if it possessed eyes. 

Here is how the story continues: every night is the same.

Every night, the room to the left is filled with the groans of a mattress and the lovemaking noises of the two on it, while the lonely room to the right is filled with bitter hatred, insomnia, and a feeling of betrayal. The man in the left room lovingly calls the woman his mouse and gently caresses her while the son in the right room hates the woman and silently curses her a thousand times, a million times, however many times it takes for him to fall asleep.

The inhabitants of both rooms are often shorted on sleep, but eventually the sounds from the left room always stop, while the sole inhabitant of the right room lies awake and alone, shaking in bitter fury, curled up beneath bedsheets, wanting desperately to leave the castle with all of its smoke and mirrors and too-thin walls. 

The castle is not insulted by this. The castle is never insulted by anything. The castle only remains the same way it has always been, spacious yet claustrophobic, containing a bed of love and a bed of horrible loneliness in adjacent rooms, a castle of lies and contradictions. That is how it has been for generations.

The castle is constant.

To the man, the castle is the hope for a new reign, a new life where he is and always has been the king, loved by all, with a gorgeous and wonderful queen by his side.

To the woman, it’s home, where she has lived her entire life and where eventually, hopefully, life will go on.

To the son, it is nothing but a prison. 

Eventually, after nearly a month of long and sleepless nights, the night before the wedding arrives.

Here is a plot point: on the same night, there is a wraith outside the castle.

That was somewhat of a lie. It is impossible to know whether the ectoplasmic creature outside is a wraith or a ghost or a spirit or something else entirely, but there is one thing about it that can definitely be agreed upon.

The wraith-like apparition, whatever it is, perfectly resembles the man who died nearly two months ago, the one from the garden.

In other words, it appears to be the dead king.

There are two guards standing watch outside on this night, the one before the day when the new king will marry the old queen. The guards are fairly skilled at the job of protecting the castle, although technically the job description is incorrect. The castle does not and has never needed protection from anything or anyone. It is really the people inside who have to be protected, guarded from the outside world on the off chance that someone does try to invade.

The guards never take into account the fact that the largest threats already lurk inside the castle walls.

The guards never have the chance to, because the apparition in the form of the dead king, looking pale and sorrowful, suddenly appears directly in front of them. They try valiantly to do their job and not run away in fear, but they have never experienced anything like this in all their years of guarding the castle.

One of the guards desperately shouts at the apparition, asking questions: what are you, why are you here. The thing that appears to be the dead king does not respond, simply pacing (if one could call it that) back and forth along the battlements, terrifying the guards whenever it gets too close to the corner they are huddled in.

It paces back and forth some more, back and forth and back and forth again and again, never ceasing, never breaking stride. Without warning, it slowly fades away, still walking as it does so, leaving the confused and terrified guards alone in the early morning.

There is a scholar in the castle where there hadn’t been one the day before. He had arrived at the castle the night before, saying he was a friend of the dead king’s son, and the guards had immediately taken a liking to him. The same guards now run back to their quarters and explain the situation to the scholar- after all, he attends a _university_. Surely he must know what to do.

But the scholar only scoffs at them, telling them not to be ridiculous, ghosts don’t exist.

The guards persist in their story, unwilling to go down without a fight. Finally, the scholar shakes his head exasperatedly and agrees to come with them while they stand watch on the next night, the night of the wedding.

The scholar asks whether or not this means he will miss the wedding, because he’d rather be there than not, but the guards only laugh. You _can’t_ be serious, they say, you’re a commoner, commoners aren’t invited.

The scholar frowns at this, knitting his brows, and then politely asks whether or not he will be able to see the dead king’s son, explaining that the primary reason he had made the long journey alone to the castle was in order to see the prince.

One of the guards thinks about this for a bit before finally deciding that although the castle will probably be impossibly crowded on the wedding day, the day after that might work. The scholar simply nods, absentmindedly toying with a sleeve of his garment as he does so, a worried look in his eyes.

On the wedding day, the castle is simply gorgeous.

The main hall is radiant, featuring white and red rose petals artfully strewn on the floor and beautiful silvery banners hung everywhere, giving the castle a light and cheerful atmosphere. Mirrors on the side of the room reflect all of the bright colors, adding an iridescent feel to everything. The wedding-goers are dressed in white and other assorted pale colors, and everyone is happy.

The dead king’s son is dressed in black, and cannot stand to be in the harsh room with its too-light colors and gaudy, shamelessly celebratory attitude. To him, it is only obscene. He stares at the cheery wedding attendees with a terrible feeling in his chest, a horrible feeling that he can’t name but nevertheless has been slowly burning deep inside of him for nearly a month now.

All the son wants is to get away from the claustrophobic castle atmosphere, to return to the university he had been attending. He had asked the woman about this the other day, begged her to be allowed to go back, to finish his education, to _leave_. She had frowned at this request before finally telling him that she'd have to ask his father about that. By ‘father’ she had of course meant the man she was to marry, who in her eyes could be the son’s new father.

To say that the son had not taken her response well would be the understatement of the century.

After a while, the chattering people eventually quiet down, and so the wedding begins. The son mentally blocks most of it out, only allowing himself to laugh darkly when the priest mentions something about staying true to your husband, no matter what. The girl standing next to him, the swordsman's sister, frowns at this but says nothing.

Up by the altar, the priest tells the man that he may kiss the bride. 

He does.

He does, and her lips are the color of pink icing and taste of a sugary-sweet future filled with hope, and the man couldn't be happier. For once in his life, everything has turned out to be absolutely wonderful.

All it had taken for him to get this was a murder, a poisoning, the life of a king in exchange for life as a king. It was a fair deal, he thinks. As he gazes lovingly into the blue-grey eyes of his newly wedded wife, he _knows_ it was definitely a fair deal. 

There are others, both living and dead, who would disagree with that statement.

The wedding finishes, and the girl, the swordsman’s sister, the advisor’s daughter, the son’s girlfriend, the one who wants so desperately to be _more_ than all of that but doesn’t know how yet, is standing next to the son; she begins to say something despite not really knowing what to say, something along the lines of how sorry she is, or how his father was a good man. Ridiculously meaningless words, the type one is supposed to say at a funeral.

In that instant, her brother looks over at the girl, sees her and the son standing together and raises his eyebrows just slightly. It’s merely a gesture, but the girl knows it means so much more than that, means that her poorly kept secret is out.

She murmurs an excuse and quickly dashes off. The son, still standing perfectly still, head bowed, never even acknowledges that she was there at all.

The wedding ends, but the decorations are still left up, making the castle look much more cheerful and welcoming than it has been or ever will be. It is purely a front, an attempt to move on from the grief that the castle had been plagued by over the last two moments, and everyone in the castle knows it.

None more so than the son.

It’s nighttime again, and if possible, the noises from the room to the left are louder than they have ever been before; the occupants are married now, what do they have to fear from any of the other occupants of the castle hearing them? The security of marriage and the intoxication of drink has freed them from any sort of shame they might have otherwise had.

The coital noises continue, seemingly louder and louder, and the son cannot stand the infidelity, and the man calls the woman his mouse, and the son can’t _take_ this anymore he just _can’t_ -

He leaves the room and runs downstairs.

Down the dark grey spiral staircase he runs; at this point he is willing to do anything to get away, anything to escape. It is dark both outside and in the castle, and the wedding decorations that gleamed so beautifully in the daylight are now accented with shadows, giving them an almost cruel look. The son enters the main hall of the castle- in other words, the farthest place away from the bedrooms, and begins to pace back and forth in an agitated manner. With an almost manic fixation, he treads circle after circle around the room as if he were a caged animal. 

After a while, the son stops, taking a moment to stare out the window and gripping the sill so hard that his knuckles turn white. He stares out at the darkened sky, at the balcony overlooking the town.

For a brief moment, perhaps, he thinks he sees his father out there on the balcony, looking just like he would were he alive. But of course it is only imagination. Of course.

He would have given anything for it not to be just his imagination, would have given anything to make the most recent two months simply a bad dream, to have his father be wonderfully, gloriously _alive_ , to have a father who was king of Denmark and a mother who was married to him, to be at school, to be happy. 

But of course that is only imagination.

The son thinks briefly about returning upstairs before finally deciding against it in case his mother and uncle are still awake. He ends up tightly curling into a ball in a corner hallway and picking mindlessly at the loose threads on one of the decorative tapestries, attempting to convince himself to feel normal again and bitterly hating himself for it when he finds the task impossible. Despite the complete silence cloaking the downstairs area where he is, it is a very long time before he finally gives in to sleep.

Outside on the balcony, a guard who has come to replace another on the watch thinks he hears a noise, and he asks who’s there.

And thus the story unfolds, and thus the secrets and lies that have been enveloping the castle finally serve to destroy the inhabitants. Everyone knows the story. Everyone knows what happens next in the tale of the castle.

Here are some images, regardless:

  * The scholar sees the apparition, and believes in the apparition, and feels a rush of pure horror the likes of which he hadn’t felt since he was a child.



  * The next morning, the woman sees that one of the tapestries in a corner hallway is extremely frayed. She nearly brings it up to her new husband, but then doesn’t, for reasons that she can’t quite explain to herself.



  * The man- wanting to bond more closely with the son since, after all, the son is the heir to the throne and needs to learn about kingship- denies the son’s request to leave, and the son feels the last vestige of hope leave him, and all that’s left is a hollow shell, and he wants to die. 



  * The scholar walks into the main hall while the son is sobbing like his heart will burst. The son looks up and sees him, and they embrace just like always, and for a second the son has the chance to pretend that everything is normal, everything is all right.



  * In another part of the castle, the swordsman leaves and attempts to give relationship advice to the girl, but the girl only teases him in response. The advisor arrives and gives both the swordsman and the girl advice for their futures, although the quality of said advice can certainly be debated. 



  * The son sees the wraith, and it’s his father but it’s also not his father, and the wraith tells him to murder his uncle, and he doesn’t know what to do or how to do it or _anything_.



  * The castle remains the same as it always was.




And so the web of corruption all unravels from there.

In the story’s end, both the swordsman and the entire royal family are lying dead in the main hall, the main hall that is still so gorgeously decorated despite the corpses on the floor.

The doors to the castle open and a prince walks in with an entourage of soldiers. The prince is one who comes from a different castle and is understandably shocked to find that the entire royal family is no longer living. After expressing his condolences, he tells his soldiers to bear the body of the son to the stage and shoot a volley of bullets in memoriam, and that is that. 

No one in the castle notices the change. No one would, because the change isn’t really a tangible thing, not something that can be seen or felt.

The castle, had it been gifted with the ability of sense, would have noticed what had happened right away.

The air is different. Not just the air, but the entire castle seems to have changed, although architecturally it’s still the same castle it always was. But the atmosphere of the castle, the tangle of secrets and lies that had permeated the castle for generations upon generations, that is gone. Vanished. The corruption has all died with the royal family, and in its place there is cleanness, brightness, a blank slate that directly coincides with the arrival of the new prince. 

In time, of course, there will undoubtedly be more corruption, more secrets, and more lies to fill the castle, and at some point it will undoubtedly return to what it used to be, since humans are all horribly multifaceted beings with tendencies for that sort of thing.

But for now, it is a new start.

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This fic was primarily inspired by three things:  
> \- my thoughts about Hamlet before the play  
> \- my thoughts about Fortinbras at the end of the play, and how he's symbolically the hope for the future, how he represents that even though the royal family's dead, life still goes on.  
> \- my thoughts about all of the corruption in the castle, and how i really like the atmosphere of Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet despite myself- it's gaudy, it's colorful, and the black-clad Hamlet sticks out so _painfully_ during scene 1.2.
> 
> As always, please feel free to let me know if you have any comments/critiques!


End file.
